Never Fly Too Close To The Sun

To Cry Or To Lie

2am

Down the long road three female figures walked. The tallest, in the middle, was being steadied and issued support from the arms of the girls either side of her. She walked with no direction or sense of balance, occasionally stumbling. The only thing stopping Stacie from falling face-first into the pavement were the straining arms of Chloe & Beca clutching at her hands.

That tall girl was still tipsy and found all of this hilarious, giggling as her friends heaved her along. Whereas, both Chloe & Beca had sobered up from their drinking game 4 hours beforehand, and (despite them having said earlier that it wouldn't happen) they were the designated babysitters for the mess in their arms.

Without warning, Stacie stumbled briskly out of support and headed to the grass on a nearby houses lawn. Here she knelt and began to wretch. The smell from the substance pouring out onto the dew-encased blades of grass wafted over to the other two - Chloe wrinkled her nose adorably and Beca grimaced while uttering a quiet 'Ewww'. Stacie was still spluttering and spitting out her insides 5 or so minutes later, and Beca decided to ask Chloe what had been bugging her.

"Umm..aren't her parents gonna be really pissed at her..and us for being this wasted?" the brunette hesitantly spoke in a quiet yet silky tone.

Chloe didn't take her concerned eyes off of Stacie as she replied, "No don't worry..they won't be up, and so long as we get her to her room quietly without breaking or being sick on anything then it's okay. I have a bottle of water and some aspirin in my bag, we should sober her up before morning so she's also slept it off a little before morning. It always works," Chloe reassuringly glanced over at Beca and winked cheekily, making the small girl blush and break eye contact.

"You guys usually finish the night by 2am?" Beca asked, genuinely curious to know the answer.

Now that Stacie had finished throwing up and was just sitting to get some fresh air a few metres from her vomit the ginger allowed herself to relax and turn her full attention to the conversation, "Aha no..we tend to keep going till about 4. We've done a couple of all-nighters too, they were epic! But I guess she had a bad day/week because she was in a destructive mood."

"Destructive mood?" Beca pushed, carefully watching for hesitance and boundary-crossing in the ginger's face but saw none.

"Oh err yeah..Stacie kinda goes off the rails a bit. You know how some people, when they're scared or upset or hurt, they run away and hide? Well, Stace doesn't do that..she goes out into the world and does the stupidest stuff because it makes her forget all the problems for a second."

"Why don't you stop her?" the brunette whispers back, shocked.

"Trust me, I've tried. I put so much effort into it when it started, and I thought she had stopped - because she wouldn't get totalled with me anymore.. But then I found out what had happened was instead she was getting in with a REALLY bad crowd and taking majorly dangerous drugs and doing reckless stuff when she wasn't with me. So, I had a long chat with her about all this, and she admitted she wanted to stop but couldn't. I understood this because.." Chloe trailed off and subconsciously rubbed her arms before coming back to reality and continuing, "Because I..umm..I'd been watching her do this and know her well enough to see that it wasn't really her making the decisions. That's when I said to her that I'd let her get drunk and I'd get her home/somewhere safe and look after her so long as she ceased to hang out with those other guys and would never take drugs again. She agreed, and that's why I don't stop her - this," she gestured to the side where the pale girl was resting her heavy head on her hands, "is better than that. I can't stand the thought of knowing it would be my fault if something happened to her because she went back to that gang-thing because I'd been a dick and told her no."